Price, battery life, performance – that's how you sell PCs

The majority of PCs that commercial resellers shipped to enterprise customers in Q4 were AI-capable, however, it was the traditional levers of price, battery life and performance these biz buyers were mostly sold on.

Some 54 percent of laptops shipped from distributors to their UK customers in the final three months of 2025 contained a neural processing unit, and a quarter of these were deemed next-generation AI hardware, ie, ones that are based on NPUs with 40+ TOPs.

Generating more than a passing interest in these devices is taking longer than PC makers hoped for or forecast, and this is due to relatively high prices and a lack of killer apps. On-device AI processing just isn't tempting for many office workers. But vendors are keen to promote them because they promised higher margins.

Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at Context, which compiled the stats, said prices are deflating in the ...